“The massive expansion of school police is predicated on the idea that it makes schools safer, but this just isn’t true. Schools with heavy police presence consistently report feeling less safe than similar schools with no police. There is no evidence that SROs reduce crime, and there have been only a few instances where officers played a role in averting a potential gun crime (these mostly involved threats). In one 2013 case an officer in Atlanta stopped a school shooting in progress; the intended target had already been shot, along with a school employee, and the perpetrator was no longer shooting when apprehended. Research generally shows that reported crimes actually increase with the presence of SROs. This is in part because they uncover more contraband and treat more things as criminal matters than would have been the case previously. There is no solid evidence that they reduce thefts or violence.”
a decade ago, 20 children and 6 staff members were shot and killed in the tragic sandy hook elementary school shooting. today, a decade later, 14 children and 1 teacher had their lives taken at robb elementary school in texas. it’s been a decade, and there has been nothing done to prevent this from ever happening again. may they all rest in peace.
the south texas blood and tissue center are in critical need of blood donations following this horrific mass shooting. you can visit their website to find a donation location.
british liberalism is worse than american liberalism actually
i could kill jamie oliver rn. we are having a cost of living crisis read the fucking room!!
They’re not lowering the price of healthy food tho are they? Nah they’re just raising the price of the cheap calories and quick energy. So now instead of being able to bulk out your meals with a chocolate bar so you can last the ray you just have to fucking starve. Fuck Jamie Oliver.
I think we should write unnecessary sequels to public-domain classics.
I wanna read Dracula 2: Sherlock Holmes and the Curse of Dracula’s Ghost. I wanna read Pride and Prejudice 2: Elizabeth Has a Gun.
This is literally Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
No, it’s not. P&P&Z is a re-imagining of the original plot, not a sequel. I want to give Elizabeth a gun after the events of the first novel are concluded.
who would Elizabeth have beef enough to kill over with?
Idk, I haven’t actually read P&P since school and I honestly don’t remember it all that well, but that’s the magic of writing unnecessary sequels to public-domain works. It could be whoever we want it to be.
George Wickham.
Lydia comes to Pemberley for a visit, sans her husband because Darcy will not let that man set foot in their house after what he did to Georgiana. And she’s just as bubbly as usual, just as chatty. Until Darcy makes his excuses and leaves the two sisters sitting in front of the fire, and after a slight pause Lydia informs Lizzy that she can’t imagine how she manages to stay happy with a man so serious and grim as Darcy.
Lizzy, who knows her husband well enough by now, and that he was, in fact, smiling for most of dinner, tells her that they are well suited for each other and she is light enough for both of them.
After another pause, Lydia turns dark serious eyes to her eldest sister and asks in a tremulous, “Is he cruel to you too?”
Because we know George Wickham. We know what he is. He’s the man who tried to seduce a fifteen year old girl (Georgiana) for her fortune. He’s the man who ran off with Lydia Bennet, then also fifteen and the youngest of five sisters, knowing her family would be forced to give him her dowry and pay for them to marry her or else she’d be ruined. All the sisters would. And Lizzy knew, she knew the man was a rake and a cad. She’d even seen the way he yanked her arm in the carriage that first time they came home after their elopement. But somehow she’d still hoped that he’d try to make her happy. That hope is dead now.
Though not as dead as Wickham’s about to be.
It would be quite easy, she thinks, to make it look like a hunting accident. But then she wouldn’t get to see the fear in Wickham’s eyes. She wants him to know, you see. She wants to watch the charm and bravado drain from his face as he hears the pistol cock and realizes his final fatal error. Because while it might be a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife, there is yet another greater universal truth he failed to recognize.
Don’t fuck with the Bennet sisters; they will end you.
We need to get on top of copyright reform so we can have more unauthorised sequels to classic Disney movies where the title character straight up fights the Devil without needing to piss around and pretend we’re merely drawing on the same public domain source material. Pinocchio and the Emperor of the Night is pulling a lot of weight here, and we need to share the burden!
The 1987 unauthorised sequel to the 1940 Disney film.
You know, the one where Pinocchio fights the Devil:
I saw this~ It was undoubtedly cool but was so strange relating it to Disney Pinocchio X3; I always assumed it was just riffing on classic Pinocchio as a theme. There was also another one that was like, Pinocchio in space? and there was a giant space whale? Like, people trying to use established characters I assume to save time on explanations but they went in wildly different directions with it.
Pinocchio and the Emperor of the Night is specifically positioned as an unofficial sequel to the Disney adaptation, and contains elements that are present in the Disney adaptation, but not in the public domain source material. There was a big lawsuit about it and everything – one which Filmation ultimately won, as the court determined that the film doesn’t contain enough Disney-exclusive elements to qualify as a derivative work.
We need to get on top of copyright reform so we can have more unauthorised sequels to classic Disney movies where the title character straight up fights the Devil without needing to piss around and pretend we’re merely drawing on the same public domain source material. Pinocchio and the Emperor of the Night is pulling a lot of weight here, and we need to share the burden!
We need to get on top of copyright reform so we can have more unauthorised sequels to classic Disney movies where the title character straight up fights the Devil without needing to piss around and pretend we’re merely drawing on the same public domain source material. Pinocchio and the Emperor of the Night is pulling a lot of weight here, and we need to share the burden!
Concept: inverted metroidvania where the environments are full of things that move you around in various complicated ways, like every screen is a Rube Goldberg machine of cannons and jump pads and teleporters and things that grab you and swing you around like a reverse grappling hook and such, and all of your “mobility” upgrades are things that let you selectively interrupt specific types of movement in specific ways in order to fuck with where you ultimately end up.
For example:
The cannon sabotage is an inertial damper that causes you to instantly lose all momentum and fall straight down when activated
The teleporter sabotage is a little EMP widget that makes you pop out of hyperspace equidistant between your starting point and where you were supposed to end up – and yes, it’s 100% possible to telefrag yourself in this way, though in other cases (e.g., when the teleporter’s default destination is inside a wall) it may be necessary to avoid a telefrag
The thing-that-grabs-you-and-swings-you-around sabotage is literally just a knife that lets you cut the cable mid swing, sending you shooting off to gods-know-where
It would be extremely frustrating to play.
okay, I haven’t played a lot of metroidvanias, but I loved Portal… yeah, I would play this. what would the story be for this? Zero gravity might make a good explanation for why momentum matters so much.
You absolutely don’t want it to take place in zero gravity, because that removes too many opportunities for Fuckery. However, even with the general emphasis on forced movement and the negation thereof, it may not occur to the average player that gravity is, itself, a form of forced movement, so of course one of the final late-game upgrades is a device that lets you selectively switch gravity off.
The actual end of the game is the normally easily accessible room to the right of the 1st screen, but the game starts by you trying to open the door before a 5 minute long journey throughout the whole game as you get launched and teleported around until you get to the proper “level1”.
Behind the door is the off button.
I feel like this would be an absolutely fantastic tongue-in-cheek but unexpectedly hard-hitting metaphor for retaking control of your life. Like this hypothetical game is basically making autonomy of movement- one of the things often consideredthe basic of basics in video games- a highly contentious resource.
Your character cannot choose where they end up. And the only salvation to their predicament is to basically, invest as much as possible in being spiteful in response; I’m just imagining that the earliest tutorial is a series of three devices that no matter what you do keep launching you back to the start platform, but one of them is conveniently in disrepair- so if you keep banging your head against the wall, it visibly gets weaker and weaker until it breaks and lobs you towards the first upgrade, which you can use to come back and sabotage it, starting your path forwards.
Like it would inevitably be a frustrating game but I feel like with clever design and just enough incentives and other fun aspects threaded into it, you could make it a pretty fun puzzle-platformer that uses said frustration to tell a story. Especially if there’s multiple viable solutions incentivizing you to mess with stuff- possibly even to the point of, like a ‘true’ metroidvania, there’s multiple routes, if you can just figure out how to get there.
[Image description: a reply from Tumblr user @mkoookm reading “Every boss eventually self destructs but you game over when they die so you have to stop them from killing themselves to progress”]
Suggestion. The base upgrades is the ‘nix this effect in mid-go’, but the boss-battle victories are ‘shut off this effect in it’s entirety’ which means it stops certain effects from blocking paths, and allows you to change how the chain effects go.
As an upgrade scheme, that does have the virtue of allowing for very simple controls: every ability is on a single button, with the context of what you’re interacting with and the timing with which you press said button determining which upgrade is activated. Just for fun, let’s make it the same button that’s used to cancel out of a menu.
As an aside, something I wanted to expand on is that this premise isn’t just an inverted metroidvania in terms of its mechanical gimmick – it’s also inverted in terms of its basic thesis of what a metroidvania is. I had a very particular theme in mind when I made the initial post, and all of the comments in this thread have built on it in various ways.
Basically, your standard metroidvania is about gaining agency. You begin with access to only a small portion of the game world, fenced in by obstacles designed to tell you “no, you can’t go here” and “no, you can’t do this”. Because the prototypical metroidvania is a 2D platformer, that “no” is expressed in terms of limiting your ability to move about.
As your ability to move about improves over the course of the game – running faster, jumping higher, whatever – the world’s “no, you can’t” progressively gives way to your own “yes, I can”.
Here, that equation is turned on its head. Right from the start, you have access to an enormous range of fanciful ways to move about the game world, but never on your own terms. You can cross the world in a single step, but you can’t walk into the room next door. “You can” becomes “you WILL”. Everything that isn’t forbidden is mandatory.
There are still upgrades, of course – it’s a metroidvania, in spite of it all – but those upgrades don’t give you the ability to do things: they give you the ability not to do things. The sole agency the player character is afforded is the agency of refusal. Each upgrade confers a new way to say “no, I won’t”. No to velocity, no to gravity – it will be on your terms, or not at all. Even the boss “fights” play into that; the only way to make progress is to say: “No, you don’t get to have an epic battle to the death. I will not be party to this.”
And that button at the end that turns the whole crazy contraption off? That’s the player character saying “no” to the whole damn game. They will not participate in this horseshit any further. There’s no fancy ending cutscene – just the resounding clunk of the main power going out and a smash cut to black. Roll credits.
(Honestly, it would be more thematic if you press the button and the game immediately does a hard exit to desktop, but then folks would think it was broken!)
I started listening to hello from the halowoods and idk what Solomons deal is being the instrumentalist and whatnot I just know I want to beat the shit out of him
I haven’t been on tumblr too much for quite a while for a variety of reasons, and I can’t promise that’s going to change (I’m … very ADHD …) I hope that my blog gives you some food for thought.
That said, I want to reiterate a couple of my blogging principles for your consideration:
First and foremost, I use the word ‘anti’ all over this blog - both in old posts and new. When I first started this blog in 2016, its meaning was understood by my audience. However, the meaning of ‘anti’ has become murky and controversial over the years, so let me define it here:
‘Anti’ is short for ‘anti-shipper’ or ‘anti-[ship]’.
Anti-shippers are people in (mainly English-speaking) fandoms who:
demand sexual purity and Americentric morality in fictional content, particularly ‘ships’ (short for ‘[usually romantic or sexual] relationships’), from fans participating in fan discussion and creating fanworks on social media sites,
where the sexual purity and Americentric morality of any given fictional work is frequently subjective and/or openly contradictory.
Crucially,they enforce their demands via:
violent and bigoted rhetoric
targeted harassment
noise mobs/dogpiling
violations of privacy
threats of physical (and occasionally sexual) violence
threats to income
property destruction, and
(occasionally) physical assault.
Antis named themselves ‘antis’ back in 2015-2016. They don’t like the label so much now (though they still frequently use it) because of their violent reputation.
This blog is heavily focused on what anti-shipping is, why anti-shippers exist and act the way they do, and the damage anti-shipping does to online fandom communities via thoughtful, reasoned analysis of anti-shipping rhetoric and sociology. The goal is to honestly look past the surfeit of anti-shipping violence and understand why its arguments and methodology have genuine appeal to many fandomgoers without judging those fandomgoers.
There are certainly anti-shippers who spout violent rhetoric because they’re remorselessly abusive, but I doubt that the majority of anti-shippers fit that description.
On the contrary: I believe there are sociological reasons anti-shipper communities are so prevalent in fandom today, and I believe people become anti-shippers for valid, personal reasons. For instance, I believe that the structure of modern social media has fundamentally changed the structure of fandom and how fans communicate. It’s harder to avoid content you don’t want to see, for instance. Has this encouraged the growth of anti-ship communities? I believe it’s a likely factor - one of many.
There is also plenty of evidence that anti-shipping communities tend to be insular and internally abusive. Members are expected to ‘cut off’ anyone who does not share their views on how fandom should conduct itself, and members who leave the community are demeaned, smeared, and targeted for harassment. This makes it exceedingly difficult for anyone who became involved in anti-shipping to escape it.
Furthermore:English-speaking (particularly American) fandom is heavily influenced by the same underlying societal factors that have brought us right-wing-based rising authoritarianism / anti-progressive bigotry / open white patriarchal supremacy today: things like white fascism (which started in the USA), Manifest Destiny, European/American Imperialism, Christian Fundamentalism / Puritanism, the post-Vietnam antigovernmental white supremacist movement, the AIDS genocide/crisis, backlash to the Civil Rights Movement, and backlash against gay and trans rights.
Although most of fandom - including anti-shippers - are themselves targets of right-wing hatred, Puritanical / Imperial / racist / anti-queer / misogynist / transphobic arguments frequently make up the basic elements of the rhetoric anti-shippers use to justify their violent abuse of shippers.
Many of these puritanical/imperial/racist/misogynist/anti-queer/transphobic talking points were dressed up in progressive language before anti-shippers started employing them by faux-progressive groups such as TERFs/SWERFs/radfem enablers, truscum, and exclusionists.
Anti-shippers are not typically aware of this, and may fall anywhere in their conscious desire to gatekeep marginalized communities for real people. (And pro-shippers such as myself are not immune to using right-wing arguments, either.*)
Because of all these factors, I believe it is crucial to understand anti-shipping rather than simply dismiss it anti communities as weird fandom phenomena made up entirely of bullies and jerks. I also believe it’s crucial to understand not only anti-ship rhetoric, but also to identify its origins.
The haters aren’t going away, and we aren’t going to shame them into stopping. But if we understand and dismantle their arguments, we can limit their influence more effectively and - most importantly - maybe provide an escape rope out of an abusive anti-ship community for those who need one.
Thanks for being here.
(*Pro-shippers - people that argue it’s okay to ship or portray whatever you want in fiction, even if it’s a harmful or illegal dynamic IRL - tend to fall prey to ‘free speech’/’anti-censorship’ rhetoric as employed by intolerant right-wingers.
Because right-wingers use obfuscating language, distinguishing between ‘I want to be allowed to incite IRL violence’ & ‘I want to be allowed to explore dangerous relationship dynamics in fiction without regard to RL morality’ can be weirdly difficult at first blush. But if you loudly advocate for a group that right-wingers want to incite violence against, they’re usually quick to expose themselves. ;) )
My favorite thing about the Cellblock Tango is that the merry murderesses’ situations range from “not guilty” through “legit self-defense” past “heat of the moment” to “straight-up premeditated murder” but no matter what they accept everyone else’s situations as Valid. The premeditated-murderesses are like “yeah that super sucks that you’re in here for something you didn’t even do” and the people with valid legal defenses are fully down with “fuck his shit up, sister”
A bit of fun historical trivia for your Dungeons & Dragons cleric – both gaming history and history history:
In earlier editions of D&D, clerics were typically proficient only with bludgeoning weapons, with the rationale being that clerics aren’t supposed to shed blood. Further, this rule was often claimed to be inspired actual, historical dicta issued by the medieval Catholic Church governing the conduct of their clergy.
Historically, it’s true that the medieval Church did, at various times, issue rules against members of the clergy owning and wielding weapons of war. These rules were issued because many priests and bishops were also wealthy landowners, and often became involved in military entanglements with other landowners – and at least some of those priests and bishops weren’t satisfied with leading from the rear. Many were apparently very keen on getting their hands dirty in person, and had to be firmly reminded that it’s not great optics for a bishop to be out there lopping people’s heads off.
However, there’s no historical evidence that any priests ever tried to work around those rules by restricting themselves to blunt weapons in order to avoid shedding blood. This is not surprising; for one, Church dicta against priests getting involved in combat weren’t always phrased in terms of bloodshed, and even when they were, nobody could reasonably claim that bashing someone’s head in with a mace doesn’t shed blood! Even so, the idea of priests wielding blunt weapons in order to avoid violating rules against shedding blood is not a modern invention; it’s basically a thousand-year-old urban legend.
Now here’s the twist: some martially inclined priests did make a point of carrying staves or rods in battle, but not for that reason. The preponderance of evidence suggests that it wasn’t about avoiding bloodshed, but about plausible deniability: a staff or rod could reasonably be claimed to be a symbol of office rather than a weapon, and rules against participating in battle typically didn’t rule out simply being present at a battle in order to rally the troops.
So, you know, if you were a priest or a bishop who preferred the personal touch, and somebody was like “we literally caught you on an active battlefield carrying what is clearly a weapon”, you could be all hey, this isn’t a mace, it’s a rod, and it’s a symbol of your ecclesiastic authority. You were present at that battle purely to lend moral support to your side’s troops – and if you just happened to be approached by hostile soldiers, and consequently were obliged to bash their heads in with this heavy metal rod that you just happened to have on your person, well, that’s unfortunate, but self-defence is self-defence, right?
From this,we can take away two things:
1. The tradition of rules-lawyering is embedded in the game’s historical inspirations just as much as its own history.
2. The fact that you’re playing a respectable cleric doesn’t mean you can’t be just awful.
I’m trying to picture what sort of holy order that guy could conceivably be a member of such that he’d be able to claim with a straight face that a wrecking ball is a symbol of office, and every possibility is amazing.
